With friends like that for the cause of freedom of the internet, who needs enemies? I have to think that they just -increased- the odds of draconian legislation being passed to help contain outbreaks just like this.

How are these attacks going to help our cause? The more I read about this the more I believe it's all a cover up by the government or some other pro SOPA force. Makes it seem like these bills really need to get passed.

I'm certain the feds can back-track the traffic and find more ip addresses to servers which were compromised and home addresses which controlled them. The net isn't as loose as it once was and the more this activity happens the more tools the feds will build to track and back-track.

With friends like that for the cause of freedom of the internet, who needs enemies? I have to think that they just -increased- the odds of draconian legislation being passed to help contain outbreaks just like this.

Reminds me of a line from a Douglas Adams book, referencing the distant rumble of a passed storm - leaving the impression of a man muttering "and another thing", who lost an argument 20 minutes ago. Yeah, this is a pretty poor grumble, nothing to match the heroics of Wikipedia, Wired, Google, et all who took on SOPA/PIPA in a constructive manner.

Taking down sites will do nothing but give the corrupted politicians more amo. Why not concentrate on digging up dirt con corruption and start making it public? Get some incriminating info on RIAA/MPAA/Politicians.

The CITIZENS of the country who elect and send representatives to make laws for them, cannot do ANYthing against the repression those representatives rain down on them - from nullification of habeas corpus to censorship. if they do, they are pushed into 'free speech zones', or batoned down in public............. but, those who are dubbed as 'criminals', react on their behalf with unmatched efficiency that would put the biggest picketing protest to shame....

when things come to this point in a society, it means that that society, with everything in it, is broken beyond repair and needs a total reset.

All those people who dare opposing unjust laws! They are just provoking an unreasonable response! The world would have been a much better place if that Rosa Parks had just sat in the back of the bus, like she was told.

you think that, if they havent done that, no crap like sopa pipa schmogga would be out ?

there werent any such hacktivism back in 2005. and yet, they popped out the attack on network neutrality at that year. apparently they have been cooking it since 2-3 years. and also the rumors of acta starting came out that year. so, it was probably underway from a while ago, but noone knew.

wake up. this is a war, and they treat you as their enemy. they were BENT to do these, to implement censorship, REGARDLESS of what you did.

you havent engaged in any acts of terrorism. neither your neighbors. in fact, there hasnt been any case of domestic terrorism in the u.s. since 2001.

and yet, habeas corpus was just invalidated with the infinite detention act..............

see ? it doesnt matter whether you behaved. they will do it regardless.

hacktivism only reminds people that all is not lost. and governments and corporations are not all that powerful. in that, its something good. its like the gestapo prison air raid british did in early ww ii. it was strategically unimportant, but the deed was so courageous and so irritating to germans that it broke the air of invincibility around them and gave morale to both allies and the french resistance.

its time for you to say 'viva la resistance !'. for you are already under occupation in america.

Yes, taking down sharing sites is bad. But vigilante attacks at a time when the government is already itching to censor the internet are fucking silly. It's like protesting the TSA by putting bombs in your luggage.

"Look like complete idiots"... to who? Kids on forums like you? Grownups will condemn these silly DDOS attacks (if they understand them at all), and it does not help any cause... and to people who actually understand network infrastructure (capacity planning, attack mitigation)? They know this shit can happen to anyone, even precious Google. It doesn't make anybody "look like complete idiots", it's just angry children with botnets who want attention.

"it" = the next wave of the "we are stopping piracy in defense of America" vs "screw you guys - you aren't as good as us - we'll take down your site to prove it"

The same war everyone has been having since Napster. These takedowns won't stop piracy. Site takedowns won't cause any harm to the lobbying organizations. Both sides will use the acts to fuel their respective fires.

In the end, the internet gets less open - the industry loses out on innovation because they are fighting - and the "costs of war" mean nobody wins.

However, it doesn't seem like the real pirates or the music/movie industry loses either - just the general population.

not to put a damper on things, but how does this really hurt any of these groups? I might be able to buy something on Universal Music, but I'm not very likely too. The other sites are just business portals. All Anonymous really did was mildly inconvenience some low level employees trying to log into their corporate intranet. Meanwhile MegaUpload's still down and the owner's still facing criminal charges and decades in prison...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Bus_Boycott [wikipedia.org] was the direct effect of Parks' protest and caused major finacial loses for the transportation system. Now, tell me how it is different from DDOSing the living shit out of **AA and friends?

While the SOPA protest yesterday was effective, today's action by the DoJ was basically a big "fuck you" to due process and working within the system.

So fine, you want a war, you got one. For every site they take down, we need to take down 5 or 10, and not just for one day, for as long as is possible.

The time to be peaceful and work within the system is obviously over. Occupy Wall Street was nowhere near as effective as Arab Spring, and that's because we were not throwing Molotov Cocktails and shooting cops.

Ok, we got the message. No matter how hard we try and work within the system, you will CHANGE the system to be to our disadvantage.

So fuck you.Now it's war, complete with the cocktails and shootings, until things really do change.

I didn't say that. What I meant to strongly imply is that DDoS is totally counterproductive and accomplishes less than nothing. Someone else on here pointed out that airing dirty laundry of the bad guys might at least accomplish something. All this DDoS attack does is stir up the public's fear of anarchy and crime so that their elected representatives can scare them into supporting some nasty bit of freedom-stealing legislation that affects all of us.

Beating down SOPA by rallying all the sheep in the world was a triumph. This DDoS thing is a textbook example of shooting oneself in the foot for no purpose.

What the hell, Anonymous? What damage does hacking DoJ or the RIAA/MPA sites?Hack iTunes, hack Netflix, hack pages that offer services whose money goes to RIAA pockets. If you shut down a page that offers nothing, what you get is nothing. (except being charged for (pretty much) terrorism without causing any significant damage to the people you want to attack).

Anonymous should damage their SOURCES OF REVENUE, not their useless face sites.

I was in the middle of downloading old One Tree Hill episodes, when megauppload got yanked. Will I suddenly go out and buy the DVDs??? Ha! Not likely. The show was fun to watch when it was free, but I'm sure as hell not going to pay for it.

I'll go find a different form of entertainment, like watch Free TV over my antenna, goof-off on youtube, or go read a book.

The RIAA/MPAA just doesn't get it. They are NOT losing money because most of us never had any intent of buying their shit in the first place

Please define "it" for the rest of us. Because to most, "it" appears to be "anything that the people of anonymous take a fancy to this week".

Yeah, "Anonymous" is a bunch of vigilante thugs, as far as I'm concerned.

I have to wonder: if you're part of an anonymous group, then you don't know who else is a member of your group, right? So you can't very well disavow any action done by someone who says they're "Anonymous". It's just another guy wearing the same silly mask as you are--how do you know he's not a member of your group? For that matter, how do you know you are a member of the group? If "Anonymous" were serious, and if it were really a group, it would work out a way so that their actions can be authenticated as being those of the one, true "Anonymous". I'm sure they will welcome suggestions by the highly qualified (and mostly anonymous) members of this community.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Bus_Boycott [wikipedia.org] was the direct effect of Parks' protest and caused major finacial loses for the transportation system. Now, tell me how it is different from DDOSing the living shit out of **AA and friends?

Ah yes, organizing a boycott against a service versus forcibly preventing others from using said service. Clearly these are one and the same.

Might I humbly suggest that if the public cared about incompetency then Sony Entertainment would no longer be in business and most nearly every PS3 would already have been recycled.

Might I also suggest that if people cared about their digital property rights that Universal Music, EMI, etc. [wikipedia.org], Paramount, Disney, etc. [wikipedia.org] would be hemorrhaging money and preparing to file for bankruptcy protection.

The war that needs to be fought has not just one front but two. The people in charge and the people who could care less.

today's action by the DoJ was basically a big "fuck you" to due process and working within the system.

How so? They convened a grand jury to look at the evidence, then got warrants, and now they're filing charges. That IS due process. I'm suspect about whether or not the evidence is genuine, but I haven't seen it and neither have you, so it's way too early to say whether or not this was a legitimate action.

Honestly, I don't give a rip how they made money, even if it was all from blatant piracy. To me, the problem is that the US has no legal authority to arrest people living and working in a foreign country, who have never set foot in the US, no matter what they did. I don't care if they were grinding up kittens and using slave labor; it's the responsibility of the country they're in to police their activity, not the US arresting them for breaking laws in a country they've never been in.

If you (plural, general) disagree, then you need to fly yourself to Iran and turn yourself in for breaking their laws, as I'm sure you've broken some of their laws. And you need to send your wife and daughter to some village in Afghanistan to be stoned to death for not covering themselves in public.

Irrelevant. They're located outside the US, therefore US law does not apply to them. If you disagree, you need to fly yourself to Iran to be charged with breaking some of their laws, as I'm sure you have.

I see a lot of venting and ranting, but not a lot of info about what actually has or has not happened. No one seems to have noticed some of these Web sites are up and running.

copyright.gov [copyright.gov] is upDOJ [justice.gov] is upRIAA [riaa.com] seems to be downMPAA [mpaa.org] is upUMG [universalmusic.com] is downBMI [bmi.com] is down

OK, now that we've got those facts sorted out, the next question is who cares?

This isn't like a DDOS attack against Amazon or Google. None of these organizations, government or otherwise, depend on their Web sites to transact business. Copyright.gov is an informational resource that contains reference material you can find in many other places. No one cares if it's down. Did you even know it existed before it allegedly went down? Justice.gov exists to inform the people about what the department is doing. That's it. If Anonymous wants to raise awareness about the DOJ's activities, taking their site down has the opposite effect, and does not hurt the DOJ. When was the last time you visited the MPAA or RIAA site? Is that where you're going to look to decide what movie you want to see tomorrow, or what music you're going to buy on iTunes? And UMG and BMI's businesses don't depend on their Web sites... their music is marketed and sold elsewhere.

We've known for about 12 years now that it's really not that hard in the scheme of things to DDOS even the biggest sites on the Web. Remember the shocking 3-hour attack on Yahoo [slashdot.org] in Feb 2000? The prevailing thought then was, "If they can shut down Yahoo, they can shut down anybody. [cnet.com]" This was a legitimate concern because with its site down, Yahoo's business does not exist. But these attacks are being directed at sites where it really doesn't matter. All it does it generate a scary-sounding news headline. Some of Anonymous's other antics have some real world implications for their targets... this does not.

Copyright in itself is a fine idea, it is just that in the American system it has been perverted and corrupted.

Which is the American system.

The trick is to make it work for you long enough to get away with it or make enough money to influence legislation to work on your behalf.

For a little fun, try guessing where we'll be in terms of these 'rights' in another 10 years.

Dateline Russia: US forces have launched missiles on most major Russian cities and beachheads are established in the Baltic and along the Pacific, with the plan to push on to Moscow as soon as possible as the Hollywood Backed Government of the United States strives to overthrow the unjust Russian Regime which dared to declare 'Fair Use' with every incident of Copyright Violation.

If it were physically possible to "picket" an Internet site (something which is LEGAL in the physical world), we'd be doing it. But it isn't, so... what do we do? The goal is to change minds which means influencing people who do NOT already agree with you, or who may not even be aware of what you're fighting for.

What's your suggestion? Door-to-door petitioning? Good idea, here's the problem. There are 350 something million people in this country. Can you reach them all with people on the street? Yes, but how long does it take? Compare that to the ability of massive media companies to reach those same people, whenever they want however often they want, with whatever MESSAGE they want. TV and radio, these are basically enormous PA systems that belong to private parties, who have huge advantage over any individual, hell even any collective of individuals, in terms of making people hear a message. Oh, and Congress seems to really like these guys too.

Even though there are millions of us and only a few of them, we can't get the message out as effectively. The Internet is the only thing that promises to change that. Don't you understand? The Internet changes the way power and control flow through the social relationships on this planet. This has got to be the most terrifying thing ever to any major power. Seriously, just look at the role of social media in the worldwide revolutions over the past year.

The US government is shitting bricks that something like that could happen here. So what happens? Out of nowhere come SOPA and PIPA, bills which threaten to shut down precisely the same web sites which are used for this freely flowing communication: sites where users can post unreviewed content in real time. Sites like Facebook. Twitter. Slashdot.

Need I even continue writing this damn post? Isn't it clear that what we want to say is MORE IMPORTANT than what the RIAA and MPAA have to say? No really, you stand there and tell me with a straight face that what has happened to copyright and intellectual property in this country in the last 30 years is a good thing.

The Internet is our power right now. We simply can't allow it to be manipulated by corporate and political interests. If we use it right, we might just be able to come up with a system of government that makes the world better.

The takedown of MegaUpload the day after the SOPA/PIPA blackout was a message from the powers that be, have no doubt about it. What you are seeing is the reaction of angry people to a situation they feel no control over. You should just be thankful it isn't violent.

"Very, very elite hackers?" You do realize you're talking about Anonymous, right? They're a bunch of basement-dwelling twats with a V for Vendetta fetish

yeah. a bunch of basement dwelling twats with a v for vendetta fetish.

first, if you had known zit about the underground scene, you would know that they had a 'v for vendetta' fetish LONG before even v for vendetta was published as a comic. it is the general sentiment/culture/understanding in those parts.

second, twats with fetishes cannot break in and steal data from defense contractors, or take down major websites ranging from fbi to doj.

and if you think that the botnet power that can take down those sites are owned by a bunch of basement dwelling twats - you are really way too ignorant of this.

More importantly: MU is visited by millions of people, gets shut down, causes problems to said people.Now I'm not american so I dunno about the DOJ, but who ever goes to the *AA websites? How is their enforced lack of presence from the net a damage to the corporations behind them? What's the point, other than "waahh, waaahh, stop messing with our toys"?

They were not arrested by US agents - they were arrested by New Zealand law enforcement at the request of US agents. So there's absolutely nothing unusual there. Likewise, the seized servers were in Virginia. Whatever you might think of the case itself, your outrage over the method of the arrest is a little misplaced - we have mutual extradition agreements with many countries.

I don't know enough about the site to have an opinion; but if a foreign national, living in a foreign country, stole my identity and ran up charges on my US-based credit cards, tapped out my US-based bank, I would sure hope that US law enforcement (assuming they investigated and agreed there was enough evidence to prosecute) could get the cooperation of the government of the foreign country where the thieves lived and have them extradited for trial here.

And again, before anyone jumps down my throat, I'm not commenting on the merit of the case, or comparing piracy to thievery, or whatever. I'm simply saying that as per the international cooperation, there's absolutely nothing unusual here, and I would hope not. This is why we have extradition agreements.

Yeah, honestly, I would. The only reason why they make the money they do is because drugs laws are retarded; they ruin the lives of simple users, do nothing to stop actual drug use or the cost of drug use on society, and foster organized crime. Even in places where the penalty for possession is death or life imprisonment, people get caught smuggling drugs constantly.

If they legalized drugs and regulated them, they could take the criminal element out of the equation, put the proceeds towards treatment as opposed to incarceration, and actually make people's lives better, but the DEA and CIA make far too much money off of drugs and the war on drugs for that to ever happen.

I believe what the gist you are trying to say but failed too articulate, IMHO, is that...

Authority without Accountability is never a good idea in the long run.

Anonymous are a bunch of little shits* who think they have some power - which they do for now. Their belief is the "end justifies the means" except they haven't (yet) learnt the lesson that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." We'll see how much of an influence they have in the coming years...

The "problem" is copyright is not respected by the youth =) Which I say Good for them!

* Not all civil dis-obediance is bad.

"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable." ~Louis D. Brandeis

"it" appears to be "anything that the people of anonymous take a fancy to this week".

Are you new here? That is exactly what "it" is. The purpose of some portion of Anonymous is exactly what that portion of Anonymous says it is today. But they probably aren't talking to you. Tomorrow some portion of anonymous will decide to do the same thing, or something else. Pray that some portion of anonymous doesn't decide that making your life difficult would be teh lulz.

And that's why Anonymous will still be here tomorrow. There are no "leaders" to arrest. Because everybody speaks for Anonymous, nobody speaks for Anonymous. Anyone who tells you why Anonymous does something probably wasn't there when the decision was made.

I thought you people weren't supposed to identify yourselves publically? "We are legion" and all of that trite. It'd be a real shame if someone were to report you to Homeland Security for supporting what they now consider to be a terrorist group. I'd imagine your chest-beating nonsense would sound a lot lot more like screaming if you were being beaten and raped in Guantanamo.

Remember the "big plans" that Anonymous had for November 5th last year, where they essentially claimed that something big was coming? Remember how nothing happened? No, of course you don't. How about when they claimed they were going to take down the New York Stock Exchange website? Yeah, that didn't happen either. In fact your little Guy Fawkes fan club seems to have more failures under their belt than successes.

Taking down major websites? What, by telling all of the little nerds in #anonops to run LOIC, that kind of "taking down?" Yeah, that works really well. A few days after they get bored the sites are right back up, if they're even affected at all. And yeah, that "botnet power" that you're so mystified by? That can be bought. Easily. By a bunch of basement dwelling twats.

Here's a little exercise for you, anon. You want to prove how powerful you are? Identify me in this thread. I mean you're all-powerful hackers aren't you? A site like Slashdot should be a pushover compared to the defense contractors that Anonymous supposedly conducted successful attacks against. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Actually I won't, because I know you can't do it. You're just a bunch of script kiddies buying your Fawkes masks off Amazon running mundane, run of the mill DDoS' on a few sites no one even looks at half of the time. You can spew all the "we are legion" nonsense you want, the truth is that you're no more than a bunch of maladjusted sociopaths with a superiority complex.

How about you crawl back under a rock and go back to your "underground scene" you pathetic excuse for a human being?

It doesn't matter how immature Anonymous is being, nor how their efforts are non-productive or even counter-productive. None of that matters to them because it is simply human nature to strike when angered.

Arrest every single member of Anonymous, and another group will spring up to do the same thing. This is because their behavior is a direct consequence of their situation: real human beings perceive that they are the victims of harmful and unjust laws. So, they will do what history has demonstrated again-and-again to be human nature: strike the oppressor.

This response was entirely predictable. And as the government passes even more restrictive laws, and becomes even more draconian in their enforcement, more and more people will get pissed off and will fight back.

Some will fight back through proper political channels. Most feel too politically disempowered for that, so they will fight back more directly. More enforcement will only add fuel to this fire.

Unless the authorities capitulate, things will only get worse. Many innocent people will get caught in the middle and harmed, but that won't inhibit the "revolutionaries" for a second. They will fight until they are satisfied. Count on it.

All of this has happened before and this will all happen again. Those who remember history are doomed to watch it be repeated.

In the end, the internet gets less open - the industry loses out on innovation because they are fighting - and the "costs of war" mean nobody wins.

Historically forcing sites offline by legal means have always lead to increased copyright infringement. People see it as a personal attack against their actions and beliefs (i.e. file sharing is okay) and so are even less inclined to give the bastards doing it money.

It also spurs development of new technologies that can't be taken down and which hide the user's identity. We should thank the RIAA/MPAA for improving privacy and security for all of us and ensuring our supply of free content is secure and invulnerable to legal attack.

Who is going to bring the charges? Who is going to pay for years of red tape in court? An individual?

Even comparatively powerful nonprofits like the EFF don't have the resources to follow through on a copyright counterattack. Even if they did, it would simpy be retaliation, no more effective than a halfhearted DDOS for bringing about any real change.

That is why the campaign against SOPA/PIPA is so important, right now represents one of the few times we the people actually have a say in the copyright matter. And if they do pass, in any form, we have lost. I would expect the Patriot Act to get repealed before SOPA would.

Please people. Do not screw with industrial control systems. They are interlocked (hopefully in hardware as well, but not always) for safety. Messing with them can actually kill people. And lets hope they're not connected to the net at disney world. I hate copyright abuse as much as the next guy, but do you really want to start terrifying and killing kids on disney world rides? That is so messed up. Its one thing to hit a RIAA website, another to screw with something powerful that you don't really understand.

Let's assume that there is no NZ law supporting copyright (false).Let's assume that there is no NZ law against apropriating the electronic data of other for your own use without consent (false).Let's assume that their business was entire conducted in NZ (false, heck, servers were confisacated in the US).

But, for the sake of argument, let's assume all of those are actually true instead. Ready?

You still lose. The whole point of extradition laws is that you agree to transfer people who are found to be criminals by another government to that governemnt's control. Iran is a stupid counterexample; we don't have an extradition agreement with them. Many countries have limits to extradition - for example, some will not extradite their own citizens to the US for crimes which the US permits capital punishment. There might even exist countries which will only extradite people who have also performed criminal acts in their current nation (by that nation's standard).

In any case, those special exemptions to reality that I made for you above? They don't actually apply.

"Whatever you might think of the case itself, your outrage over the method of the arrest is a little misplaced - we have mutual extradition agreements with many countries."

It's not misplaced, these extradition agreements were set up under pressure from the US to allow extradition of terror suspects and so forth after 9/11.

Now the US is using them to extradite for things that aren't even illegal in the home country, and arguably not even in the US either.

This is why in the UK there's so much uproar about the extradition treaty being one-sided, in theory it's actually not, but in practice it is because whilst the UK only asks for extradition of, for example, American citizens who have committed murder whilst in the UK, or joint British-American citizens who have committed say fraud, whilst in the UK, America is requesting extradition for British teenagers who have run websites deemed legal in Britain.

The fact is, America is abusing the system well beyond what it was intended for.

"I would sure hope that US law enforcement (assuming they investigated and agreed there was enough evidence to prosecute) could get the cooperation of the government of the foreign country where the thieves lived and have them extradited for trial here."

Why would they have to be extradited? why couldn't they face justice in their home country?

There is something unusual here, just like there's something unusual with the case of the guy from Sheffield in the UK last week - these people are facing extradition despite doing nothing illegal in their home country, to the point that even the police in their home country saw no point pressing charges. In this particular case there's a big problem - the extradition treaty does say the act must be illegal in both countries, yet here in the UK we've had an idential case (the Oink case) where the guy was found not guilty of any wrongdoing, yet this case was completely ignored by the presiding judge in favour of a completely different, but largely irrelevant case that did justify extradition - obviously there is something fishy going on there, it may be incompetence, or it may be corruption, but something is not right- I wouldn't be surprised to find it's the same in these other cases too.

For what it's worth, in that case the FBI was personally involved, they were present when the kid's computers were seized at his house. I'd be amazed if the FBI wasn't present during these nesw raids too, so sure they may not have power of arrest, but they were certainly at the scene dictating what they wanted in at least this one case.

Now you can argue it's the fault of the host countries for allowing this, and I'd agree to an extent, but the reality is America does have power in the world and there are only so many things you can piss it off over before you risk suffering economic isolation. When America abuses it's power like this it can be hard for countries to say no. With America's power comes responsibility, but it's abusing that right now.